Conference Agenda

Just transitions are at the centre of the global policy agenda, as recognised (implicitly and explicitly) in the Paris Agreement and the “Glasgow Climate Pact” from COP26. In a broader sense, just transitions reconcile two critical challenges that we face. The structural, transformative efforts needed to eliminate emissions and limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius could also underpin efforts to meet other Sustainable Development Goals, such as those focusing on reductions in poverty and inequality. Addressing both issues simultaneously is of instrumental significance to the goal of just transitions. In fact, not considering the social dimensions of climate policies might make it difficult to implement some emissions reduction measures due to their low social acceptability. Many reforms have already been blocked for these reasons in recent years; and research has found that fairness is the most important driver of public acceptability of climate policies. Therefore, paying attention to poverty and inequality reduction both strengthens the political economy and makes more ambitious climate policies possible. The current context and the focus on just transitions also offers opportunities, as climate change mitigation and improvements in social protection can go hand in hand. For example, ambitious climate action to substantially decrease carbon emissions until 2030, requires carbon pricing policies and fossil fuel subsidy reforms that create fiscal space. Such revenues could fund social protection programmes to support households with increased energy prices, thereby benefiting the just transition process.

A systematic analysis of social protection measures in climate policies is critical, as several governments plan carbon pricing and subsidy reforms to achieve climate targets. Particularly, vulnerable households require protection as well as promoting measures to deal with the impacts of climate mitigation and adaptation policies in the coming years. To increase the understanding of the underlying policy processes and political economy factors that influence the success of such climate policies and the role of social protection, we build a database that collects data on carbon pricing and fossil fuel subsidy reform cases. These reforms cases are identified through a systematic literature review and relevant datasets. For all reforms episodes, we collect process and context variables that influence the implementation. By means of statistical analysis, we aim to establish patterns in the use of social protection in carbon pricing and subsidy reforms, and how social protection policies depend on other political economy factors.

In the last two decades, countries all over the world have implemented carbon pricing policies as part of their fight against climate change. In Africa, however, no such policy was adopted until South Africa started taxing greenhouse gas emissions in 2019. More recently though, an increasing number of African countries have decided to design carbon pricing policies. Be it a carbon tax or an emission trading scheme, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Nigeria, Morocco, Malawi, Botswana, and Gabon are designing their carbon pricing policy at the moment.

Research has shown that in the agenda-setting phase as well as the policy design phase, external (f)actors have been involved. In fact, as of 2010, the decision of nations to pursue a carbon pricing policy was mainly the result of international factors such as climate commitments and external influence. Next, in the policy design phase, external actors, like multilateral organizations or development agencies, are often involved by offering technical support or capacity development activities. Through these kinds of supporting activities, they can play an important role in the policy-making process by accelerating or delaying policy change. Against this background, the following question arises: which actors are engaged in the carbon pricing policy-making process, how and why do they get involved?

This paper looks at the domestic, regional, and international actors that are active in the field of carbon pricing in the abovementioned countries, uncovers the nature of their activities, and explains their motivations to act this way. Based on a document analysis as well as interviews, the analysis provides a mapping of all the actors and will explain their linkages and relationships. By doing so, this study contributes to the understanding of climate policy-making in African countries and the role of external involvement.

We are currently witnessing a boom in mineral extraction driven by exploding demand for green technologies. Rare earth elements, lithium, cobalt, tungsten, nickel and other ‘critical minerals’ are essential components for batteries, magnets and electronic components that enable electric vehicles, renewable energy and advanced devices. Given their urgent role in addressing climate change, critical mineral extraction benefits from an assumed level of legitimacy compared to fossil fuels. Can the ethical legitimacy of critical minerals translate into stronger environmental and social conditions around extraction? Or will the climate imperative trump other ethical concerns? The answer to these questions depends on the balance of economic and political power of corporations, consumers, states and communities within governance regimes and global production networks.

Powerful actors – from multinational corporations, to powerful politicians – are harnessing the renewed extractivist drive to pursue their pre-existing interests in profitability and development. Extractive accumulation is the collection of strategies and relationships at local, national and global scales that enable corporations to first secure natural resources and then profit from their extraction. That initial acquisition of resources (resource grabbing) necessitates the dispossession of someone else, generating rapid changes in existing political, social and economic relations. These changes and their resultant conflicts are driving the creation of new governance standards and associations like the Institute for Responsible Mining Assurance and the World Economic Forum’s Global Battery Alliance.

This paper reviews global social and environmental conflicts over the extraction of critical minerals before analysing emerging global governance standards. Like governance mechanisms in extractive industries more broadly, these establish standards for participation of affected communities and civil society at various sites and scales. What is new about the governance of critical minerals is mechanisms that bring together actors operating along global production networks from mine site to consumer, potentially giving lead firms more control over the conditions of extraction.

Market-based instruments have long become the central elements of international response to climate change, with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process facilitating the constant expansion of carbon markets, both in their geographical and sectoral scope. Apart from a brief resistance during the initial years of conceptualising these market-based solutions within the UNFCCC process, there has been broad—and enthusiastic—support from many governments of the global South to these mechanisms, including from some of those which have traditionally been flag-bearers of climate justice at the international stage. This lies in contrast to the vibrant climate justice movement from the ground up, which remains heavily critical of resorting to carbon markets for any kind of climate action. They point out how carbon markets only serve to compound the climate crisis by postponing the much-needed emission reductions at source far into the future and deepen carbon colonialism as well as potentially leading to loss of control for the local communities on their natural resources like forests. With the announcement of plans in 2022 to set up a national carbon market by the Indian government, these issues gain even more significance for the future trajectory of climate politics in the global South.

This paper seeks to interrogate the contestations between the notions of climate justice vis-à-vis the market-based mechanisms between States in the global South, taking the case of India, and those of grassroots climate justice advocates. Tracing the evolution of the domestic policy in India related to market mechanisms, including the state-level initiatives within the country to set up carbon markets along with the negotiating stance(s) of the country on the international stage over time, this paper critically examines the climate governance architecture anchored in the neoliberal free market economic framework. The paper highlights how the postcolonial elites in India have partaken in furthering the process of commodification of nature for the greater appropriation of carbon wealth, which promotes their consolidation of power. Finally, the implications for notions of climate justice and democracy in the global South due to these neoliberal climate change policies are discussed in this paper.

In recent years, the complex system of international institutions addressing the role of finance in climate change mitigation and adaptation has grown exponentially. New transnational governance networks are created, and International Organizations (IO) launch new frameworks and initiatives each year. Particularly the G20-initiated Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) has become dominantly influential over other climate finance governance initiatives led by different IOs, such as the UNEP Financial Initiative. The TCFD, chaired by Michael Bloomberg, provides climate-related financial disclosure recommendations to decarbonize financial assets. Many old and new transnational networks adopt or integrate the TCFD rules into their governance mechanisms. What makes the TCFD an influential agent in the current global climate governance architecture? This paper explores what constitutes the power of the TCFD, drawing on Barnett and Duvall’s different concepts of power. Of note, the TCFD emphasizes climate’s impact on business actors instead of companies’ impact on society and nature (i.e., focusing on single-materiality over double-materiality). This characteristic seemingly represents business interests that could reinforce power asymmetries among actors that damage the legitimacy of global climate finance governance. Therefore, understanding the power of the TCFD is important for addressing the power inequalities in global climate finance governance that hinder just sustainability transformations. Based on qualitative document analysis, surveys, and expert interviews, we investigate forty transnational climate finance networks that have adopted the TCFD rules and examine what perceptions, interests, and institutional settings trigger their TCFD rule-taking and increase the TCFD’s influence among various governance institutions. This issue resonates with the power-related questions of the second conference stream: democracy and power for sustainable transformations.